User Manual Oromiya Portal System

Page comment

The Page Comments portlet allows you to add page comments easily in your portal page. Using this portlet, you can easily add, or edit, or delete Page Comments. Let's do is as follows:

1. Click on the Configuration icon to the top-right of the portlet where you want to display the Page Comments.

2. Check the Enable Comments check box from the configuration form and click the Return to Full Page

3. Click the Post Reply link, if you want to add Page Comments.

4. Input your Page Comments. Click the Reply button to save the inputs, or the Cancel button to cancel the inputs.



Figure 5.10 Page comment

5. You can edit Page Comments by clicking on the Edit icon first. Then, update the Comments. Click the Update button to save the changes, or the Cancel button to cancel the changes, as shown in the following figure.

6. Alternatively, you can delete Page Comments by clicking on the Delete icon. A screen will appear asking if you want to delete this. Click OK to confirm deletion, or Cancel to cancel deletion.

7. If there are a lot of Page Comments, and you are not at the top of the portlet, you can go to the top, by clicking on the Top icon.

5. Polls

Do you want to keep track of the votes on different issues that concern the bureau or the portal? The Polls portlet and Polls Display portlet are useful tools.

Adding Question for a poll

First of all, we plan to add questions. As an administrator, you may need to create a page for the polls to be displayed. Then you need to create a lot of questions for polls such as, "Is Oromia portal useful to you?" or "Do you plan to apply online for investment license?". To do this first you need to add a question for the poll. To add question:

1. 
   Hover your mouse over the dock now, from the many links click the Control Panel.
   
2. 
   Navigate to the Control Panel.
   
3. 
   Under the Content heading, select the Polls.
   
4. 
   On the right of the screen the Polls question addition form will appear.
   
5. 
   From this form click Add Question tab to add question and a form just like figure 5.11 will appear.
   

F
igure 5.11. Add Pools Question

6. 
   Add the title on the Title, the question on the Description and choices on the Choices. Try to give the Title a descriptive name in order to remember it for later time.
   
7. 
   You can add more choices by clicking on the Add Choice button. After clicking on the Add Choice button, you can delete a choice by clicking on the Delete button located next to the choice name input box.
   
8. 
   Check/uncheck Never Expire box or set the Expiration Date.
   
9. 
   Set Permissions by clicking on the Configure link. To configure additional Permissions, click on the More link. Here, we just use default settings.
   
10. 
    Click on the Save button to save the inputs.
    

Of course, you can add other Questions

Managing Questions

Polls questions are displayed as question name, number of Votes, Last Vote Date, Expiration Date, and Actions, with the set of icons: Edit, Permissions, and Delete. By default, this portlet will display all Questions for the current User who has proper Permissions.

Edit a Question

Let's suppose that we want to change the Description of the question, “Is Oromia portal useful to you?" From “Is Oromia portal useful to you?” to "Do You Like the portal?". We need to edit and update it. Let's do it as follows:

1. 
   Locate the question “Is Oromia portal useful to you?" in the Polls portlet, and click on the Edit icon from the Actions next to the question.
   
2. 
   Update the Description with the value “Do You Like the portal?”.
   
3. 
   Click Save button to save the inputs.
   

Delete a Question

Suppose that the Question “Do You Like the portal?” is not wanted anymore, we need to delete it. Let's delete it as follows:

1. 
   Locate a Question (“Do You Like the portal?”) that you want to delete.
   
2. 
   Click on the Delete icon from the Actions located next to the question.
   
3. 
   A screen will appear asking if you want to delete this.
   
4. 
   Click OK button to confirm deletion.
   

Note that deleting a Question will delete all related votes which belong to this Question?

W
hat's happening? The following table shows the Permissions for the Polls Questions. A Community User may have Permissions (marked 'X'): View, Delete, Permissions, Update, and Add Vote, while a Guest User may have the Permissions, View, Add Vote, Delete, and Permissions. By default, a Community User has the Permission actions (marked '*'), View and Add Vote, while a guest user only has Permission to View.

Using Polls Display Portlet

Do you want to display a specific poll's results in the Intranet? The Polls display portlet would be a useful tool for that.

In the Polls display portlet, the Poll Votes for the given Question, “Is Oromia portal useful to you?”, are displayed as Percentage, Number of Votes, Last Vote Date, and Choice names. The selected Question name is shown at the upper left and the total Votes are shown at the bottom left. By default, this portlet will display all the Votes for a given Poll Question, for a current User who has proper Permissions.

Displaying Polls

In order to display a poll you need to add a poll display portlet to the page you want the poll to be displayed. To add a poll display:

1. 
   Hover your mouse over the dock, from the many links click the Add Application.
   
2. 
   Under Content Management category of Add Application, Add the Polls Portlets portlet to your page.
   
3. 
   I
   n the middle of the Polls Display Portlet you will find a link with ”Please configure this portlet to make it visible to all users.” Text. Click this link and the poll display configuration will be displayed.
   

Figure 5.12. Poll Display Configuration

4. 
   Select a Question from a list of Poll Questions to be published in the Portal by selecting the Setup tab. Furthermore, you can also configure Permissions, if you have proper access, by selecting Permissions tab.
   

There are only two Permission actions for the portlet: View and Configuration:

1. 
   With View Permission, users can view the Poll results.
   
2. 
   With Configuration Permission, users can update the Poll Questions to be published in the website and configure Permissions, such as reassign Permissions and delegate Permissions for Users, User Groups, Organizations, Community and Guest
   

Using Polls Effectively

Generally speaking, Users (who have proper Permissions) or administrators can create multiple choice Polls that keep track of Votes and display results on the Page in the Polls portlet. On the one hand, the Polls portlet can manage several separate Polls. On the other hand, a separate portlet such as the Polls Display portlet can be configured to display a specific poll's results.

Actually, the Polls portlet acts as a voting application in order to take the public opinions. It provides users with scientifically sampled survey to assess public opinions. Meanwhile, it effectively uses the portal's customization and personalization features, and furthermore, allows an end user to customize the results shown.

As Poll administrators, you can easily add and delete the Poll topics. You can customize the portlet through actions such as changing the result title, reordering the Poll options and specifying whether the user can select multiple options.

In theory, Polls are scheduled to open and close at given times. As Poll administrator, you may view previous Poll results if you want to make use of this information for your statistical analysis. At the same time, you may configure portlet instance to determine which Poll is to be shown in the portlet.

However, there are some differences between survey and Poll. A survey is a multiple pages survey questionnaire, while a Poll is a one page questionnaire and is replaced by Poll results after voting. Polls consist of straightforward lists relating to questions and potential responses, either in the form of multiple choices or text. When information gathering requirements are simple, and you do not require the identification of the respondents, you can use Polls. Otherwise, you have to use survey.

6. Wiki

Oromia Portal Wiki portlet, like the Message Boards portlet, is a full-featured wiki application which has all of the features you would expect of a state of the art wiki. Again, though, it has the benefit of being able to take advantage of all of the features of the Portal platform. As such, it is completely integrated with the portal user management, tagging, and security platform.

So what is a wiki? Put simply, a wiki is an application which allows users to collaborate on information. This, of course, has many applications—the most famous of which is Wikipedia, which is a full encyclopedia developed collaboratively by users from all over the world, using a wiki.

A wiki application allows users to create and edit documents and link them to each other. To accomplish this, a special form of markup is used which is sometimes called wiktext. Unfortunately, the proliferation of many different wiki applications resulted in slightly different syntax for wikitext in the various products, as each new wiki tried to focus on new features that other wikis did not have. For that reason, a project called WikiCreole was started. This project resulted in the release of Wiki-Creole 1.0 in 2007, which is an attempt to define a standard wiki markup that all wikis can support.

Rather than define another wikitext syntax, Oromia Portal Wiki portlet supports Wiki-Creole as its syntax. This syntax is a best-of-breed wiki syntax and should be familiar for users of other wikis. The portlet provides a handy cheat sheet for the syntax on the page editing form, with a link to the full documentation if you wish to use some of WikiCreole's advanced features.

Getting Started with the Wiki

T
he Wiki portlet works just like the other portlets. Add the portlet to a page using the Add Application menu and then click Configuration in the portlet menu in the Wiki portlet's title bar. You should see some options which will now likely be familiar to you just like the figure below.

Figure 5.13. Wiki Configuration

As with the Message Boards portlet, you can configure messages which come from the Wiki portlet. The Email From tab lets you configure a name and an email address which will be populated in the From field of email messages sent by the portlet.

The Page Added Email tab lets you customize the message that is sent to subscribers when a new Wiki page has been added. The Page Updated Email tab lets you customize the message that is sent to subscribers when a Wiki page has been edited.

The Display Settings tab lets you configure how wikis and wiki pages are shown to users. You can choose which wikis are visible by moving them to a Visible or Hidden list. You can also enable comments and comment ratings on wiki pages. This allows users to interact with each other concerning edits to the content, enabling them to collaborate on changes.

The RSS tab allows you to set up the RSS feed for the Wiki. You can set the maximum number of items to display and whether you want to display the full content, an abstract, or just a title in the feed.

Once you have set the options the way you want them, click Save and then click Return to Full Page.

Managing Wikis

T
he Wiki portlet can contain many wikis. By default, it contains only one, called Main. At the top left of the portlet window is a small icon of a wrench. This is the Manage Wikis button. Click on it. You will then be brought to a screen that

Figure 5.14. Wiki Portlet

allows you to add, modify, and delete wikis. You will see that the Main wiki has already been added for you.

A
t the top of this screen is a Permissions button. Clicking this allows you to define what roles have access to create wikis. If you have created a specific role for creating wikis, you can click the box in the Add Node column and then click Submit, and that role will have access to create new wikis in this portlet.

Figure 5.15. Manage Wiki

Clicking the Add Wiki button brings you to a screen which allows you to give the wiki a name and a description. You can also set up some default permissions. When you create a new wiki, it will appear in a list at the top of the main page of the portlet.

Next to each wiki in the list of wiki nodes is an Actions button. This button contains several options:

Edit: Lets you edit the name and description of the wiki.

Permissions: Lets you define what roles can add attachments to wiki pages, add pages to the wiki, delete pages, import pages to the wiki, set permissions on the wiki, subscribe to the wiki, update existing pages, and view the wiki.

Import Pages: You can import your data from other wikis. This allows you to migrate off of another wiki which you may be using and use the Portal wiki instead. You may wish to do this if you are migrating your site from a set of disparate applications (i.e., a separate forum, a separate wiki, a separate content management system) to the Oromia portal, which provides all of these features.

Currently, MediaWiki is the only wiki that is supported, but others are likely to be supported in the future.

Subscribe: A user can subscribe to a wiki node and any time a page is added or updated, the portal will send an email to the user informing him or her what happened.

Delete: Deletes the wiki node. To go back to your wiki, click on its name in the list of wikis.

Adding and Editing Wiki Pages

By default, there is one page added to your wiki, called FrontPage. To get started adding data to your wiki, click the Edit link at the top right of the portlet. You will be brought to a blank editing page.

You can now begin to add content to the page. Notice that there is a very convenient “cheat sheet” which can help with the wiki syntax. You can use this syntax to format your wiki pages. Consider for example the following wiki document:

T
his would produce the following wiki page:

Figure 5.16. Wiki text added to front page

This adds a simple heading, a paragraph of text, and several links to the page. Notice that the links are red, instead of the normal blue color in the default theme. This indicates that the page behind that link does not yet exist, and therefore needs to be created. If you click one of those links, you will be brought immediately to the editing screen you were on previously when you edited the front page, except this time you will be creating the page behind the link you just clicked. The wiki will display a notice at the top of the page stating that the page does not exist yet, and that you are creating it right now. As you can see, it is very easy to create wiki pages. All you have to do is create a link from an existing page.

Note that at the top of the screen you can select from the Creole wiki format and the HTML editor that comes with the portal. We generally recommend that you stick with the Creole format, as it allows for a much cleaner separation of content and code.

At the bottom of the page editing screen, you can select Categories for the article. Categories are a hierarchical list of headings under which you can create wiki pages. This allows you to organize your content in a more formal fashion. You can create categories using the Control Panel, in the Tags and Categories section.

Page Details

When viewing a page, you can view its details by clicking the Details link which appears in the top right of the page. This allows you to view many properties of the page. There are several tabs which organize all of the details into convenient categories.

Figure 5.17. Editing the default page in the wiki portlet

Details

The Details tab shows various statistics about the page, and also contains a few actions that you can perform on the page.

Title: Displays the title of the page.

Format: Displays the format for the page—either Creole or HTML.

Latest Version: Displays the latest version of the page. The wiki portlet automatically keeps track of page versions whenever a page has been edited.

Created By: Displays the user who created the page.

Last Changed By: Displays the user who last modified the page.

Attachments: Displays the number of attachments to the page.

RSS Subscription: Displays links which allow you to subscribe to the page as an

RSS feed in three formats: RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom 1.0.

Email Subscription: Contains links allowing you to subscribe to the entire wiki or just to this page.

Advanced Actions: Contains links allowing you to modify the permissions on the page, make a copy of the page, move (rename) the page, or delete the page.

History

This tab shows a list of all of the versions of the wiki page since it was created. You can revert a page back to a previous state and you can also compare the differences between versions by selecting the versions and then clicking the Compare Versions button.

Incoming/ Outgoing Links

The next two tabs are for incoming and outgoing links. These are wiki links to and from the page. You can use this tab to examine how this page links to other pages and how other pages link back to this page.

Attachments

The last tab is for attachments. You can attach any file to the wiki. This is mostly used to attach images to wiki articles which can then be referenced in the text. Referencing them using the proper WikiCreole syntax renders the image inline, which is a nice way to include illustrations in your wiki documents.

Navigating in the Wiki Portlet

At the top of the portlet is a list of links which allow you to navigate around the wiki. Next to the Manage Wikis button is a list of wikis that are currently created in the portlet. Simply click on the wiki's name to begin browsing that wiki. After this is a set of navigation links:

FrontPage: Takes you to the main page of the main wiki.

Recent Changes: Takes you to a page which shows all of the recently updated pages.

All Pages: Takes you to a flat, alphabetical list of all pages currently stored in the wiki.

Orphan Pages: This link takes you to a list of pages that have no links to them. This can happen if you take a link out of a wiki page in an edit without realizing it's the only link to a certain page. This area allows you to review wiki pages that are orphaned in this way so that you can re-link to them or delete them from the wiki if they are no longer relevant.

Search: Enter a term here and click the Search button to search for items in the wiki. If the search term is not found, a link will be displayed which allows you to create a new wiki page on the topic for which you searched